Oriente
Modernist train station whose steel-and-glass forest canopy transformed an industrial wasteland.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Oriente Station in Lisbon starts with a design brief for a train station that architect Santiago Calatrava answered with a forest of branching steel and glass. You'll hear how he read the commission in 1995, when the eastern district beyond the tracks was cut off by an industrial embankment, and the far more ambitious fix he proposed for it. The guide follows what it took to convince city planners to let him rebuild an entire stretch of the city around one station. Look up at the canopy overhead as you listen — the columns are the metaphor made literal.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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